American Jews Are Not Single-Issue Voters

September 27, 2011 3:13 pm ET —
MJ Rosenberg

A
congressional aide contacted me last week to tell me a story that he believed
illustrated a point I often make.

His
boss was visited by a group of eight seniors from his district. They
had traveled to Washington with a group of retired teachers and decided, on the
spur of the moment, to visit their representative. They had no appointment so
they did not expect to see him but wanted to see the office, if nothing else.

The
aide greeted the group, looked at the congressman's schedule, and decided that he
could at least come out to say hello. He took the names and brought them in to his
boss. The congressman perused the list and said, "The names are all Jewish. Are
they from a Jewish organization?" The aide said they were not and explained
that they were older people on a bus tour sponsored by a charter travel group
that catered mostly to retired educators.

The
congressman (a Democrat) went out and delighted the group by ushering them into
his office and talking to them for half an hour. He opened by telling them how
strongly he supported the Obama administration's opposition to the Palestinian
bid for U.N. recognition and how much he enjoyed Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu's speech before a joint session of Congress. He elaborated
on the Israel issue for a while and then asked for questions.

There was not one reference to anything he had said about Israel or
any foreign policy issue. The only issues the visitors wanted to discuss were
Medicare and "why Obama doesn't fight harder" against the Republicans. As Democrats,
they all intended to support Obama for re-election but were disappointed
with the president, especially for extending the Bush tax cuts.

The
aide said that, afterward, the congressman chided him a little for not telling
him that the group was not particularly interested in the Middle East. The aide
said that he had not said that they were. It was the congressman's assumption
that their Jewish names meant that they cared primarily about Israel.

The congressman made a common mistake. Politicians assume that the main
issue American Jews care about is Israel. To be blunt, a check to a political
campaign from someone with an obviously Jewish surname will be chalked up to
the candidate's support for Israel, unless the donor specifically indicates otherwise.

It
isn't hard to understand how members of Congress, and even the president, came
to the conclusion that the foremost issue for Jewish donors and voters is
Israel. After all, that is precisely what they hear from the lobby and its
cutouts (in the media and Congress itself). The lobby promotes the idea that
Jews are single-issue voters who only care about Israel. They do that to
enhance their own clout and to prevent policymakers from deviating from the
lobby line.

But
the polls consistently show that Jews, like most Americans, are primarily
concerned about domestic issues like jobs, choice, the environment, equality,
Medicare, etc. During the 2008 presidential election, the American Jewish
Committee polled Jews on the issues that
were most important to them. Fifty-four percent said the economy. Eleven
percent said health care. Five percent said terrorism. Three percent said
Israel.

It
was against that backdrop that 78 percent of Jews voted for Barack Obama in
2008, not because they thought he was "better" on Israel than uber-hawk John
McCain.

This
brings us to the current drop-off in Jewish support for President Obama.
According to a Gallup poll published on September
16, Obama's approval rating among Jews is now down to 54 percent from 83
percent at his inauguration.

Naturally,
the lobby and its acolytes are blaming Obama's significant slippage on the
Israel issue. They say Jews are abandoning him because
he is too tough on Prime Minister Netanyahu.

However,
the fact is that there has never been an American president who has been so
supportive, for better or worse, of every position taken by an Israeli prime
minister. No doubt some Jews oppose Obama, citing Israel, but they are the same
ones who didn't like him in 2008. And some may have been duped by the
Republican Jewish Coalition into believing that a president admired even by Israel's
rightist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is anti-Israel! Let me be clear
here. I don't approve of the president's support for Netanyahu, which is obviously
politically calculated and bad for the United States, the Palestinians, and
Israel. But anti-Israel? Not only is that charge a lie, but those making it
know it's a lie.

No,
it's not Israel that has produced the decline in Obama's standing among Jews. The
reason for the decline is that Jews are Americans and support for the president
is down among all Americans, as demonstrated in the chart above. And the reason it
is down among Jews, as for their neighbors, is because joblessness is above 9 percent
and the economy shows few signs of recovery.

For
politicians, including, notably, President Obama, to behave as if their Jewish
constituents are more concerned about Israel than they are about their own
families and neighbors here comes
very close to acceptance of the libel that American Jews are more loyal to
Israel than to the United States. The fact that the lobby and its associated
organizations tell them that Jews care primarily about Israel is no excuse. To
believe it and to act on that belief is offensive. Worse than offensive.

American
Jews have been good and loyal Americans ever since they arrived on these
shores. They understand and appreciate that America has been, since its
creation, the safest place in the world to be Jewish. They understand and
appreciate that the U.S. Constitution, and particularly the First Amendment's
separation of church and state, have guaranteed their rights ever since George
Washington himself welcomed Jews:

May the children of the stock of Abraham who
dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants
— while everyone shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be
none to make him afraid.

This
is not to say that American Jews do not care about Israel. They do. But their
national homeland is the United States and those who imply otherwise —
especially lobbyists and pandering politicians — insult us all.